Heart Stop
by Dragonflys-Girl
Summary: He knew how to pray, but all prayers had fled him. [Postep for The Fisher King Part 1]


Title: Heart stop

Author: Cookie

Rating: T – because of dark emotions and some "bad" words – sorry, still getting a hang of this rating system…

Category: Angst, Hinted romance

Disclaimer: Don't own them. Don't sue please

Spoilers: post-ep for **01.22 The Fisher King Part I** and a minor reference to 01.01 Extreme Aggressor and 01.05 Broken Mirror

A/N: Back from the little hiatus of fic-writing… think I'm getting out of practice, so please, any comments (constructive) would be much appreciated!

A/N2: I'm still trying to figure out how I'd like the season premier to be like…but right now, I want some angst and that playing with the gun shot at the very last scene…

* * *

He sat with his head in his hands in the stark white room, and he waited. He waited, while his mind kept thinking the same thought. _Please, God, let her be alright. Let her be safe_.

He knew how to pray, but all prayers had fled him. His mind had held no other thought for the past hours.

He couldn't help but feel that somehow, he was responsible for her life hanging by a thread – a very thin one by that. He had insisted on her going home. He had failed to make sure she had rested before joining in on the investigation. He had encouraged her to take a vacation at Jamaica with him. He had helped set these into motion, however indirectly.

He wasn't sure what to do with himself after seeing life drip out from her. Never in his life had he felt so helpless, so lost. Sure, in his career as an FBI agent, he had seen his share of agents down, but never once had he felt the strong emotions blazing within him now.

The other occupants of the room were equally quiet, and many of them looked as distraught as he felt. Gideon looked as if he wanted to murder the unsub bare handed. Hotch was sitting beside Haley, who was resting her head on her husband's shoulder. The supervisory agent had a haunted look on his face as if he was reliving a nightmare. Reid was simply quiet, and the young genius looked like he had trouble grasping what had happened.

Both J.J. and Garcia had stayed at Quantico in case something came up and required the team's attention. Garcia, with her unconscious role in facilitating the breech into the system, was more or less an outcast at this point. Sure, he still valued her involvement as a computer guru for the team, and that her one mistake – however grave – was not enough to nullify all the good she had done. Yet, he couldn't bring himself to call her, to reel her back into the circle. He was feeling too raw and too empty right at the moment to extend the olive branch.

He was sure the rest of the team felt the same way. Being able to trust one of your own was important being in their line of work, and right now, the memories and hurt overshadowed their trust. They needed time.

Never before had he thought he would be reduced to a pile of uselessness. He had always known what course of action would be best, but not this time. He was simply an observant in the drama that was being played out behind the door to surgery.

He waited, albeit impatiently, for updates, any sort of news, on how she was doing, and allowed himself a small comfort that he had found her in time. The uneasiness he felt when she was made to leave Quantico had prompted him to check up on her. Seeing a friend and colleague lying in their own pool of blood was not something he wanted to remember, but the image was branded in his mind.

At the same time, he recognized the added feelings surging through him as he discovered her on her living room floor. There were the usual guilt and worry, definitely, but there was something more that, while standing in her living room, he hadn't been ready to identify.

After sitting in the waiting room for hours, he was finally ready to give those emotions names – panic, fear. And love. It might sound over-dramatic, considering his reputation as a ladies' man and his "activities" while at Jamaica with her, but he could no longer deny the fact that love had entered into the relationship long ago.

It had been his personal mantra to never mess with a woman that carried a gun, and he worked hard to live up to that. Yet, unconsciously, his mind had already broken the wall down. From the moment he met her again at Seattle, he now realized, he had cared for her more than he should a fellow agent, a close friend.

He hadn't allowed himself to entertain the possibility before that they may be good together, but now he questioned whether his reluctance had cost him a chance at happiness with an amazing woman. The only thing he could do was bow his head and pray to a God that he had distanced from.

Everyone in the room looked up with the blinking light of surgery turned off.

He wanted to race to the doctor and demand answers, updates, anything, to tell him that she was alright, that she would pull through, but he found himself lacking in energy, lacking the articulation needed to make sound.

He could only look on as the doctor walked out slowly with blood – her blood, too much of her blood – drying on his scrubs.

"Are you here for Agent Greenaway?"

"How is she doing?" Gideon was the first to react and he moved forward, eyeing the doctor with uneasy eyes and weariness.

"Considering the trauma her body had gone through, she is doing extremely well. Of course, she will need time to recover. The bullet had narrowly missed any organs and didn't mushroom, so we were able to retrieve it intact. Agent Greenaway is now being moved to recovery. We'll be keeping her in the ICU overnight for observation."

"When can we see her?" his voice cracked when he finally spoke.

"Sir, the visiting hours are," the doctor started, and shook his head mid-sentence. "I'll have a nurse come let you know when Agent Greenaway is settled in her room. Please, only one person at a time. She needs her rest."

He watched as the doctor moved away and felt drained and relief at the same time. _She'll be fine_, he thought. He could feel the muscle that had been tensed tightly relax and he breathed a little easier.

"You should talk to her," Gideon, standing against the wall to his right, said softly, his eyes piercing.

"What - " he started, but stopped when Gideon shook his head.

"Don't deny anything. You don't have to justify yourself to me or to the others. You only have to answer to yourself. You have let some feelings you've locked up out these past few hours, and don't let them go back into hiding. I know regulations forbid it, but do you really think that, in our profession, it's easy to find a partner, a soulmate outside of the job?"

The nurse walked through the door before he could formulate a response, "Agent Greenaway is in her room. Which one of you would like to see her first?"

Gideon moved away from the wall, "You think about that. We'll go in first, and when you're ready, go see her."

He lifted up his head, and looked straight into the eyes of his supervisor. "Hotch?"

"Discretion is always the key," he said softly before turning to walk out the door after Gideon.

Reid, finally moving from the corner he had occupied, stopped beside him and laid his hand gently on his shoulder, squeezing comfortingly, "It'll work out alright."

He watched as his teammates walked out of the stark white room, and stood to follow them out.

He had somewhere he needed to be, someone he needed to see, to hold.


End file.
